Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"From the wise be far / Such gross unhallow'd pride; nor needs my song / Descend so low; but rather now unfold, / If human thought could reach, or words unfold, / By what mysterious fabric of the mind, / The deep-felt joys and harmony of sound / Result from airy motion; and from shape / The lovel...

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"More faithful keeps the graver's lively trace, / Than he whose birth the sister powers of art / Propitious view'd, and from his genial star / Shed influence to the seeds of fancy kind; / Than his attemper'd bosom must preserve / The seal of nature."

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"Men learn to judge of beauty, and acquire / Those forms set up, as idols in the soul / For love and zealous praise."

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"Yet indistinct, / In vulgar bosoms, and unnotic'd lie / These pleasing stores, unless the casual force / Of things external prompt the heedless mind / To recognize her wealth."

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"These the part / Perform of eager monitors, and goad / The soul more sharply than with points of steel, / Her enemies to shun or to resist."

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"Hitherto the stores, / Which feed thy mind and exercise her powers, / Partake the relish of their native soil, / Their parent earth."

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"But from what name, what favorable sign, / What heavenly auspice, rather shall i date / My perilous excursion, than from truth, / That nearest inmate of the human soul; / Estrang'd from whom, the countenance divine / Of man disfigur'd and dishonor'd sinks / Among inferior things?"

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"For to the brutes / Perception and the transient boons of sense / Hath fate imparted: but to man alone / Of sublunary beings was it given / Each fleeting impulse on the sensual powers / At leisure to review; with equal eye / To scan the passion of the stricken nerve / Or the vague object strikin...

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"Thus he learns / Their birth and fortunes; how allied they haunt / The avenues of sense; what laws direct / Their union; and what various discords rise, / Or fix'd or casual: which when his clear thought / Retains and when his faithful words express, / That living image of the external scene, / ...

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"Moreover, from without / When oft the same society of forms / In the same order have approach'd his mind, / He deigns no more their steps with curious heed / To trace; no more their features or their garb / He now examines; but of them and their / Condition, as with some diviner's tongue, / Affi...

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)